ProjectGeographies and Histories of the Ottoman Supernatural Tradition Exploring Magic, the Marvelous, and the Strange in Ottoman Mentalities

Researcher (PI)Marinos SARIGIANNIS

Host Institution (HI)IDRYMA TECHNOLOGIAS KAI EREVNAS

Call DetailsConsolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2017-COG

SummaryThe project aims to explore Ottoman notions and belief systems concerning the supernatural. Its major objectives will be to explore the meaning and content of the perceptions of the “supernatural”, to localize such beliefs in the various Ottoman systems of thought, to analyze the changes that took place and to associate them with emerging or declining layers of culture and specific social groups. The project will address larger debates in recent historiography about the relevance of the “disenchantment” and “enlightenment” paradigms, integrating Ottoman intellectual history into the broader early modern cultural history.
The research team, composed of the PI, three post-doctoral fellows, four collaborating researchers, five post-graduate students and a technical assistant, will explore these objectives and produce a web portal (containing crowd-sourced dictionaries and bibliographies, open access papers and other material), three international meetings, monographs and papers, and an annual open-access periodical journal. Specific research modules will study the rationalist trends in Ottoman science, various aspects of the Ottoman occult and magic, and the formation and development of the Ottoman cosmological culture. A monograph will be written by the PI and dwell in: the various conceptions of the supernatural/preternatural and their development, the presence of spirits/jinn in Ottoman world image, theory and practice of Ottoman magic, attitudes toward folklore traditions, saintly miracles, and “marvelous geographies”. Monographs will also be produced by the post-doctoral fellows.
The project proposes an innovative approach in many ways, in a subject very much in the frontiers of the field; by exploring the supernatural and the occult in the context of the Ottoman Weltanschauung, the project will address a wider problématique on the Ottoman culture and its place in early modernity, especially as it will focus to the role of different cultural and social layers.

The project aims to explore Ottoman notions and belief systems concerning the supernatural. Its major objectives will be to explore the meaning and content of the perceptions of the “supernatural”, to localize such beliefs in the various Ottoman systems of thought, to analyze the changes that took place and to associate them with emerging or declining layers of culture and specific social groups. The project will address larger debates in recent historiography about the relevance of the “disenchantment” and “enlightenment” paradigms, integrating Ottoman intellectual history into the broader early modern cultural history.
The research team, composed of the PI, three post-doctoral fellows, four collaborating researchers, five post-graduate students and a technical assistant, will explore these objectives and produce a web portal (containing crowd-sourced dictionaries and bibliographies, open access papers and other material), three international meetings, monographs and papers, and an annual open-access periodical journal. Specific research modules will study the rationalist trends in Ottoman science, various aspects of the Ottoman occult and magic, and the formation and development of the Ottoman cosmological culture. A monograph will be written by the PI and dwell in: the various conceptions of the supernatural/preternatural and their development, the presence of spirits/jinn in Ottoman world image, theory and practice of Ottoman magic, attitudes toward folklore traditions, saintly miracles, and “marvelous geographies”. Monographs will also be produced by the post-doctoral fellows.
The project proposes an innovative approach in many ways, in a subject very much in the frontiers of the field; by exploring the supernatural and the occult in the context of the Ottoman Weltanschauung, the project will address a wider problématique on the Ottoman culture and its place in early modernity, especially as it will focus to the role of different cultural and social layers.

Max ERC Funding

1 289 824 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-03-01, End date: 2023-02-28

Project acronymPLANTCULT

ProjectIdentifying the food cultures of ancient Europe: an interdisciplinary investigation of plant ingredients, culinary transformation and evolution through time

Researcher (PI)Soultana Maria Valamoti

Host Institution (HI)ARISTOTELIO PANEPISTIMIO THESSALONIKIS

Call DetailsConsolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2015-CoG

SummaryThe project seeks to explore culinary practice among early farming European communities, from the Aegean to Central Europe, spanning the Neolithic through to the Iron Age (7th-1st millennia BC). The project seeks to identify the ‘food cultures’ of prehistoric Europe, and to reconstruct how cultivated and wild plant foods were transformed into dishes exploring their underlying cultural and environmental contexts and their evolution through time. The project will explore how culinary identities were shaped through the selection of plant foods both in terms of ingredients as well as processing and cooking practices. Thus not only species and meals but also the equipment involved in plant food preparation will be considered for the study area, linking the end product to the relevant technologies of transformation. Macroscopic and microscopic examination of the archaeological finds and experimental replication of various aspects of food preparation techniques informed by ethnographic investigations will form the main analytical tools. The interdisciplinary and contextual examination of the archaeological record will provide a fresh insight into prehistoric cuisine in Europe, the transformation of nature to culture through cooking. The project will revolutionise perceptions of prehistoric food preparation providing insights for the ‘longue durée’ of traditional plant foods constituting Europe’s intangible cultural heritage.

The project seeks to explore culinary practice among early farming European communities, from the Aegean to Central Europe, spanning the Neolithic through to the Iron Age (7th-1st millennia BC). The project seeks to identify the ‘food cultures’ of prehistoric Europe, and to reconstruct how cultivated and wild plant foods were transformed into dishes exploring their underlying cultural and environmental contexts and their evolution through time. The project will explore how culinary identities were shaped through the selection of plant foods both in terms of ingredients as well as processing and cooking practices. Thus not only species and meals but also the equipment involved in plant food preparation will be considered for the study area, linking the end product to the relevant technologies of transformation. Macroscopic and microscopic examination of the archaeological finds and experimental replication of various aspects of food preparation techniques informed by ethnographic investigations will form the main analytical tools. The interdisciplinary and contextual examination of the archaeological record will provide a fresh insight into prehistoric cuisine in Europe, the transformation of nature to culture through cooking. The project will revolutionise perceptions of prehistoric food preparation providing insights for the ‘longue durée’ of traditional plant foods constituting Europe’s intangible cultural heritage.

Max ERC Funding

1 891 875 €

Duration

Start date: 2016-04-01, End date: 2021-03-31

Project acronymRICONTRANS

ProjectVisual Culture, Piety and Propaganda: Transfer and Reception of Russian Religious Art in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean (16th to early 20th Century)

Researcher (PI)Yuliana BOYCHEVA

Host Institution (HI)IDRYMA TECHNOLOGIAS KAI EREVNAS

Call DetailsConsolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2018-COG

SummaryThe Russian religious artefacts (icons and ecclesiastical furnishings) held in museums, church or monastery collections in the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean constitute a body of valuable monuments hitherto largely neglected by historians and historians of art. These objects acquire various interrelated religious/ideological, political and aesthetic meanings, value and uses. Their transfer and reception is a significant component of the larger process of transformation of the artistic language and visual culture in the region and its transition from medieval to modern idioms. It is at the same time a process reflecting the changing cultural and political relations between Russia and the Orthodox communities in the Ottoman Empire and its successor states in the Balkans over a long period of time (16th-20th century). In this dynamic transfer, piety, propaganda and visual culture appear intertwined in historically unexplored and theoretically provoking ways.
The aim of RICONTRANS is to investigate, for the first time in a systematic and interdisciplinary way, this transnational phenomenon of artefact transfer and reception. Applying the cultural transfer approach in combination with the recent challenging openings of art history to visual studies, this project aims to: map the phenomenon in its long history by identifying preserved objects in the region; follow the paths and identify the mediums of this transfer; analyse the dynamics and the moving factors (religious, political, ideological) of this process during its various historical phases; study and classify these objects according to their iconographic and artistic particularities; inquire into the aesthetic, ideological, political, and social factors which shaped the context of the reception of Russian religious art objects in various social, cultural and religious environments; investigate the influence of these transferred artefacts on the visual culture of the host societies.

The Russian religious artefacts (icons and ecclesiastical furnishings) held in museums, church or monastery collections in the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean constitute a body of valuable monuments hitherto largely neglected by historians and historians of art. These objects acquire various interrelated religious/ideological, political and aesthetic meanings, value and uses. Their transfer and reception is a significant component of the larger process of transformation of the artistic language and visual culture in the region and its transition from medieval to modern idioms. It is at the same time a process reflecting the changing cultural and political relations between Russia and the Orthodox communities in the Ottoman Empire and its successor states in the Balkans over a long period of time (16th-20th century). In this dynamic transfer, piety, propaganda and visual culture appear intertwined in historically unexplored and theoretically provoking ways.
The aim of RICONTRANS is to investigate, for the first time in a systematic and interdisciplinary way, this transnational phenomenon of artefact transfer and reception. Applying the cultural transfer approach in combination with the recent challenging openings of art history to visual studies, this project aims to: map the phenomenon in its long history by identifying preserved objects in the region; follow the paths and identify the mediums of this transfer; analyse the dynamics and the moving factors (religious, political, ideological) of this process during its various historical phases; study and classify these objects according to their iconographic and artistic particularities; inquire into the aesthetic, ideological, political, and social factors which shaped the context of the reception of Russian religious art objects in various social, cultural and religious environments; investigate the influence of these transferred artefacts on the visual culture of the host societies.

SummarySeaLiT explores the transition from sail to steam navigation and its effects on seafaring populations in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea between the 1850s and the 1920s. In the core of the project lie the effects of technological innovation on seafaring people and maritime communities, whose lives were drastically altered by the advent of steam. The project addresses the changes through the actors, seafarers, shipowners and their families, focusing on the adjustment of seafaring lives to a novel socio-economic reality. It investigates the maritime labour market, the evolving relations among shipowner, captain, crew and their local societies, life on board and ashore, as well as the development of new business strategies, trade routes and navigation patterns.
Maritime labour and shipping remains an understudied case of the transition from the premodern working environment of the sailing ship to that of the steamer, in a period of rapid technological improvements, economic growth and market integration. Therefore, the project will address a major gap in maritime historiography: on the one hand, the transition from sail to steam, and on the other, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, “the extended Mediterranean” according to F. Braudel.
The project examines in a comparative approach seven maritime regions: the Ionian, Aegean, Tyrrhenian, Adriatic and Black Seas, Spain and southern France. The research team composed of the PI, three postdoctoral fellows, four senior researchers and four Ph.D. candidates from Greece, Italy, Spain, France and Ukraine will study unpublished sources: ship logbooks, crew lists, business records, and private correspondence. They will produce a collective volume, several articles, a final synthesis by the PI, four Ph.D. dissertations, three workshops, one international conference and a website with an online open access database, an archival and bibliographical corpus and reconstruction of ship voyages on a web G.I.S. application.

SeaLiT explores the transition from sail to steam navigation and its effects on seafaring populations in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea between the 1850s and the 1920s. In the core of the project lie the effects of technological innovation on seafaring people and maritime communities, whose lives were drastically altered by the advent of steam. The project addresses the changes through the actors, seafarers, shipowners and their families, focusing on the adjustment of seafaring lives to a novel socio-economic reality. It investigates the maritime labour market, the evolving relations among shipowner, captain, crew and their local societies, life on board and ashore, as well as the development of new business strategies, trade routes and navigation patterns.
Maritime labour and shipping remains an understudied case of the transition from the premodern working environment of the sailing ship to that of the steamer, in a period of rapid technological improvements, economic growth and market integration. Therefore, the project will address a major gap in maritime historiography: on the one hand, the transition from sail to steam, and on the other, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, “the extended Mediterranean” according to F. Braudel.
The project examines in a comparative approach seven maritime regions: the Ionian, Aegean, Tyrrhenian, Adriatic and Black Seas, Spain and southern France. The research team composed of the PI, three postdoctoral fellows, four senior researchers and four Ph.D. candidates from Greece, Italy, Spain, France and Ukraine will study unpublished sources: ship logbooks, crew lists, business records, and private correspondence. They will produce a collective volume, several articles, a final synthesis by the PI, four Ph.D. dissertations, three workshops, one international conference and a website with an online open access database, an archival and bibliographical corpus and reconstruction of ship voyages on a web G.I.S. application.